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Sanctuary Update - 2/4/2019

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
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5,285
Changes:
- Changed the name of the "Main Forums" category to "Gaming".
- Moved the "Spurious Generalities" and "Flesh Art" forums to the "Other" category.
- Moved the "Forum Games" sub-forum to the "Gaming" category.
- Transferred all threads in forums from the "Main Forums" category (now "Gaming") to the "Spurious Generalities" forum save for the "Flesh Art" and "Forum Games" sub-forum

Removals:
- Removed the "Entertainment", "Carnality", "Science", "Society", "World News", and "Nature" forums.

Additions:
- Added the "PC/Mac", "Consoles", "Generalized", and "Tabletop" forums to the "Gaming" category.
 
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Houseman

Zealot
Sanctuary legend
Messages
1,068
Where do I go if I want to talk about gaming, but not something specific to PC or Console? Where do multi-platform gaming discussions go? Under "Other"?

Also, where are the Society forums? Where do R&P discussions go?
 

Arnox

Master
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Founder
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5,285
Where do I go if I want to talk about gaming, but not something specific to PC or Console? Where do multi-platform gaming discussions go? Under "Other"?
Good question. I'll add a new sub-forum.

Also, where are the Society forums? Where do R&P discussions go?
Oh right. Society and World News are deleted too. And put them in Spurious Generalities.

EDIT: Done. Also merged the emulation forum into the other gaming forums and renamed the gaming forums.
 
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Houseman

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Sanctuary legend
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1,068
Oh right. Society and World News are deleted too. And put them in Spurious Generalities.
I've never been a fan of too many different topics having to "compete" with other interest groups for space on the "front page". If, say, religion and politics are grouped, then religion loses, and their topics are quickly pushed down, since less people want to talk about religion than politics. That happened at The Escapist. It's the law of the bigger fish.

The way to solve that problem is to keep the fish (interests) in separate tanks (forums) so that one doesn't eat the other. That's how Gamefaqs does it. They have a forum for every single game that ever existed, plus specific forums for news, religion, politics, countries, anime, board games, technology, programming, stand-up comedy, real-life sports, etc. They have over 60,000 different boards, and now they have user-created boards growing that number.

I don't think the gamefaqs theory of "You can never have too many boards" is unsound. You just have to organize them well, or at least make them searchable.

Of course, none of what I said matters at this current moment, as we don't have the usercount to justify more than a few categories, but I like to test theories by envisioning what happens when you stretch it to extremes. I don't think this current theory of yours will hold up at scale, but it's your choice as to whether or not you'll burn that bridge when you get to it.
 

Arnox

Master
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Founder
Messages
5,285
I've never been a fan of too many different topics having to "compete" with other interest groups for space on the "front page". If, say, religion and politics are grouped, then religion loses, and their topics are quickly pushed down, since less people want to talk about religion than politics. That happened at The Escapist. It's the law of the bigger fish.

The way to solve that problem is to keep the fish (interests) in separate tanks (forums) so that one doesn't eat the other. That's how Gamefaqs does it. They have a forum for every single game that ever existed, plus specific forums for news, religion, politics, countries, anime, board games, technology, programming, stand-up comedy, real-life sports, etc. They have over 60,000 different boards, and now they have user-created boards growing that number.

I don't think the gamefaqs theory of "You can never have too many boards" is unsound. You just have to organize them well, or at least make them searchable.

Of course, none of what I said matters at this current moment, as we don't have the usercount to justify more than a few categories, but I like to test theories by envisioning what happens when you stretch it to extremes. I don't think this current theory of yours will hold up at scale, but it's your choice as to whether or not you'll burn that bridge when you get to it.
As you say, we just don't have the user count to justify a bunch of boards. If we did, I'd actually restore the default TOTSE style board layout. Having said that, this current layout is definitely not set in stone and we'll definitely add more as needed as we get more and more active.
 

Houseman

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Sanctuary legend
Messages
1,068
If the objective with this design is to attract new visitors, instead of creating a lasting design that scales, is this layout enticing to them? Will visitors look at the boards and say "not enough sub-forums, not worth it"? If they don't leave initially, will they be put off by the growing number of sub-forums that divide the topics they might be interested in and 'split the community'?

Or should we "dress for the job we want", essentially?

Just questions to think about.
 

Arnox

Master
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5,285
If the objective with this design is to attract new visitors, instead of creating a lasting design that scales, is this layout enticing to them? Will visitors look at the boards and say "not enough sub-forums, not worth it"? If they don't leave initially, will they be put off by the growing number of sub-forums that divide the topics they might be interested in and 'split the community'?

Or should we "dress for the job we want", essentially?

Just questions to think about.
Ultimately, we have to come to terms with a hard truth. That no matter how good this forum is, unless we make content to attract people to come here, they're not going to do so. Period. We have to give them a good excuse to come. Once enough people are here though, then we can really start spreading out, but until then, we have to specialize in something. I wish it wasn't like that but it is...
 

Arnox

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Founder
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5,285
To have a tag system, with the nomenclature being free-to-choose/self-enforced by users.

Some forums use a single title prefix, but tags are just better in general. I think I saw a XenForo with tags once, but I don't know if that functionality is native and defaults to disabled or needs an add-on.
Tags are definitely available, but what happens often is people using joke tags or no tags at all. Also, while preset thread title prefixes definitely work, using forums to organize threads is still generally the best way to go. Also keep in mind, we have some VERY awesome native searching tools.
 

andersonnnunes

Disciple
Messages
326
Tags are definitely available, but what happens often is people using joke tags or no tags at all. Also, while preset thread title prefixes definitely work, using forums to organize threads is still generally the best way to go. Also keep in mind, we have some VERY awesome native searching tools.
This did not age well.
The VERY awesome native searching hasn't been VERY awesome (exaggerating a bit, but it is still far from the best search system I have seen).
Still don't see why you go looking for Reddit clones instead of just enabling tags.
 

Arnox

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This did not age well.
The VERY awesome native searching hasn't been VERY awesome (exaggerating a bit, but it is still far from the best search system I have seen).
Still don't see why you go looking for Reddit clones instead of just enabling tags.
Doing some stalking eh?

Reddit did some things very right. Mainly, user-created and moderated sub-forums was a genius idea. I also like how Reddit allows one to easily track the "reply trail" of a conversation and expand or contract the branches at will. Very convenient.

But the voting... Holy shit, the voting is so bad. So if I can find a duplicate of Reddit without the shit voting or find some way to implement it myself, that might be pure gold right there.

As to the searching/tags, what about the searching don't you like?
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
936
Doing some stalking eh?

Reddit did some things very right. Mainly, user-created and moderated sub-forums was a genius idea. I also like how Reddit allows one to easily track the "reply trail" of a conversation and expand or contract the branches at will. Very convenient.

But the voting... Holy shit, the voting is so bad. So if I can find a duplicate of Reddit without the shit voting or find some way to implement it myself, that might be pure gold right there.

As to the searching/tags, what about the searching don't you like?
The one thing I dislike about the reddit and imgur comment system is that it wont load the comment chain ALL the way, but forces one to open up new tab for it. There's also the matter of following who comment on what. All the straight lines or no lines are hideous. What's wrong with bent lines like L ...
 

andersonnnunes

Disciple
Messages
326
Doing some stalking eh?
Always watching.

user-created and moderated sub-forums
expand or contract the branches at will. Very convenient.
Dunno. Good when everybody is at the same sub, but when the same content is put on 20 different subs because each one is kinda of a tag, you either visit the 20 pages or miss out some of the conversation. While if they were tags, everybody would be directed to the same thread, so you only had to visit one page to engage maximally.

But the voting
Barely affects me:
Set to never hide by negative points.
Browser set to redirect r/sub to r/sub/new, so I always see topics sorted by new.
Feed reader, ignores vote completely, also always displays by new.

So if I can find
I can think of one (or two, maybe three), let's see if you can find them.
In these situations I always think: I am the most qualified to help, precisely because I don't.

what about the searching don't you like?
Many reasons, but just as an example:
Can't paginate results directly.
Instead of https: // intosanctuary.com/index.php?search/9999/&page=4&q=reddit&o=date returning the 4th page, it redirects to the first page of results, and then you can go the the 4th page after it generated the search.
Not backbreaking, just annoying.
 

Arnox

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5,285
Always watching.
I like admirers.

Dunno. Good when everybody is at the same sub, but when the same content is put on 20 different subs because each one is kinda of a tag, you either visit the 20 pages or miss out some of the conversation. While if they were tags, everybody would be directed to the same thread, so you only had to visit one page to engage maximally.
Problems arise though when content is under a slightly different tag that you didn't specify in search. Or maybe the user just didn't tag it at all, or just tagged it with some nonsense tag because they don't care.

Barely affects me:
Set to never hide by negative points.
Browser set to redirect r/sub to r/sub/new, so I always see topics sorted by new.
Feed reader, ignores vote completely, also always displays by new.
Just because voting's off for you doesn't mean it's off for everybody else. Having said that, if you're just a lurker, than you're right. It doesn't make a difference.

I can think of one (or two, maybe three), let's see if you can find them.
In these situations I always think: I am the most qualified to help, precisely because I don't.
Can't find em. Guess you're just gonna have to tell me.

Many reasons, but just as an example:
Can't paginate results directly.
Instead of https: // intosanctuary.com/index.php?search/9999/&page=4&q=reddit&o=date returning the 4th page, it redirects to the first page of results, and then you can go the the 4th page after it generated the search.
Not backbreaking, just annoying.
Most likely a security precaution. Would make sense too since site searching has a notorious reputation for being weak to attacks, from SQL injections to denial of service. Having said that, I have no idea why you'd want to automatically get to a later page of search results without seeing at least the first page. Tell me more issues though. If you can give me a solid argument for them, I'll turn them on.
 

Arnox

Master
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5,285
Now there is a one year cool-down period while you look for the straws. The ocean is big but is not infinite, ganbatte.
Meh. I just pick others completely at random then and put them in the boat. Then I ask if they wanna include me in the group or not.
 
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